Brand identity plays an important role in the marketplace. It provides a means for consumers to identify and rely on products coming from a particular source. It also provides a means for companies to attract and build goodwill with customers, thereby encouraging repeat business. Companies therefore spend billions of dollars on advertising and product development to establish such brand identity.
The benefits of and the resources expended on brand identity create powerful incentives for counterfeiters. Among the most prevalent illicit and illegal practices threatening brand identity are counterfeiting of the product itself, counterfeiting or theft of the package or container for use with an authentic or counterfeit product, or diversion of the product wherein the product manufactured for sale in a certain market is purchased by an intermediary in that designated market and sold in a competing market.
Such practices result in significant damage to the owner of the brand including lost sales, tarnished consumer perception of the brand, and liability due to claims made on counterfeit products. For example, the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition estimates that global revenue lost due to counterfeiting is as high as $200 billion per year. In addition, labeling industry estimates suggest that counterfeiting accounts for more than 10% of the world trade. Finally, pharmaceutical companies estimate that they are losing approximately $500 million in lost sales in India alone due to imitation drugs.
In addition to injury to brand identity, rights to copyrighted works may also be compromised by unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted material.
Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,753,511 and U.S. patent Ser. No. 09/232,324, both of which are herein incorporated by reference in their entireties, disclose automated methods of evaluating and discriminating products to establish authenticity or point of origin of the product. Aspects of these inventions relate to automated methods for identifying key ingredients and/or the relative amounts of key ingredients in products using light-emissive compounds. In particular, during testing, an identifying light-emissive compound is mixed with a small amount of the sample to be tested. The sample, having the particular light-emissive compound, is then brought into close proximity with and viewed using a custom optical scanner to detect light emission of a particular wavelength from the sample.
One advantage of the test procedure disclosed in the '511 patent and the '324 application is that the sample to be authenticated is mixed with a particular light-emissive compound immediately prior to testing. This allows for the product to remain unadulterated for consumption yet allows for the interaction of the particular light-emissive compound with key ingredients in the product to establish a fingerprint for the product.
In some instances, however, it may be desirable to permanently mark the product or the package with an identifying or authenticating mark. Such identification allows, for example, detecting whether the product itself is authentic, when and where the product was produced, whether the product package is authentic or whether the product package relates to the product. Known methods of permanent marking include the use of invisible inks, holograms or other identifying marks placed on the product or product package. However, some of these techniques may not be practical in ambient light conditions, and therefore cannot be practiced in lighted areas such as retail stores. Another method includes printing the product or package with an ink containing an infrared absorbing additive. A scanner is used to detect infrared absorbence, thereby indicating the presence of the additive. This method suffers from a number of disadvantages. For example, identification of product specific information is not possible. Rather, only discrimination between a product or package containing the additive and a product or package lacking the additive is possible. Thus, discriminating between different products, manufacturing locations, or other desired information is not possible. In addition, the scanner used to read the ink is a dedicated scanner and is not capable of reading other information such as a bar code.
The disadvantages of the above noted methods are overcome in aspects of the present invention. For example, one or more of multiple light-emissive compound is mixed with ink and printed on the product or the product package during or after manufacture of the product to create an identifier that is capable of providing multiple pieces of information and that is undetectable with conventional lights and optical scanners. The authenticity of the product or package may be subsequently quickly determined. In some instances, the authenticity mark may be the bar code on the package. In this regard, the authentication device of the present invention may be used to quickly scan the bar code to identify the product as well as to verify the authenticity of the product and/or package. Authenticity of the product package may then be linked to the authenticity of the product itself. Thus, not only may counterfeit products or packages be detected but also diversion of authentic products may be readily determined.